Monday, November 28, 2011

In response to media reports that CSIS had been complicit in the detention of Canadian citizen Abousfian Abdelrazik in Sudan, outgoing CSIS director Jim Judd requested that CSIS watchdog and review panel, the Security Intelligence Review Committee, "investigate and report on the performance of the Service’s [CSIS's] duties and functions with respect to the case of Abousofian Abdelrazik at the earliest opportunity". That was in March 2009.Three months later Federal Court Justice Russel Zinn ruled that CSIS was indeed "complicit in the detention" of Abdelrazik in Sudan. Then in September of this year, newly released CSIS documents revealed the spy agency's attempts to delay Abdelrazik's return to Canada long enough for the CIA to spirit him off to Guantanamo, even as Foreign Affairs diplomats were arranging for his return, making this the biggest known Canadian intelligence agency scandal since Maher Arar.So how's that full investigation by SIRC requested by Judd coming along then?

"I wish to state for the record that I have fulfilled with diligence my mandate,"

wrote Dr. Porter in his letter of resignation to Steve.

... which got me to wondering just what was so gosh-darned important in SIRC's mandate last year that it bumped the Abdelrazik investigation requested by CSIS right off the list.From the Security Intelligence Review Committee 2010-2011 Annual ReportChecks and Balances : Viewing Security Intelligence Through the Lens of AccountabilityThe Lens of Accountability interested itself in five SIRC-initiated reviews and three public complaints.The Reviews :~ a pitch for "retooloing" SIRC to allow for "independent review" of Canada's other intelligence agencies as well as CSIS~ "SIRC also followed through on its commitment to pay close attention to CSIS’s expanding foreign investigative activities. Although overseas operations unfold in unique circumstances and present different challenges, CSIS should strive to ensure that the management of its operations abroad mirrors, to the extent practicable, the standards of administration and account­ability that are maintained domestically."~ "Today the Service is also reaching out to non-traditional partners, such as the private sector."

"In SIRC’s opinion, an effective strategy would involve identifying those sectors with the greatest potential to be of investigative value to the Service. ... the Service strives to engage and support the private sector’s security needs in other ways. Efforts are also underway to increase the number of security clearances for individuals in the private sector."

~ "an appreciation of the way in which the internet supports CSIS’s activities"
although it notes :

" At issue was the volume of information pertaining to young people being retained by CSIS as part of its operational reporting."

~ A positive review of CSIS’s cooperation "with a “Five Eyes” partner" - which could be either the US, UK, Australia, or NZ.Note to SIRC : If you have to use evasive terminology like "a Five Eyes partner" in your "positive review" rather than actually name the country you are feeling positive about, it's not really much of a public account, is it?~ "a positive impression of RCMP–CSIS cooperation"

"The relationship between CSIS and the RCMP, in particular, has moved to the forefront following the passage of the Anti-terrorism Act (2001). As a result of this legislation, CSIS and the RCMP have had to work more closely together"

~ "Canada is experiencing levels of espionage compa­rable to the height of the Cold War."

~ Afghan detainees.

" In particular, SIRC’s review found no indication that in the period during which CSIS conducted detainee interviews, CSIS officers posted to Afghanistan had any first-hand knowledge of the alleged abuse, mistreatment or torture of detainees by Afghan authorities."

however :

"SIRC noted that CSIS did not comprehen­sively document its role in the interviews of Afghan detainees by keeping records that would confirm the numbers and details of all of the detainee interviews"

SIRC also handles citizen complaints against CSIS. This year three were investigated and written up, which included the following complaints :
CSIS failing to identify itself as CSIS, harrassment of family members, suggesting to interviewee that a lawyer was not necessary, delay in providing security assessment for a site access, and allegedly providing an "unjust, unfounded, and unethical" assessment to Citizenship and Immigration Canada regarding a complainant's application for permanent resident status.

Aside from providing some gentle advice, like that in its reports to Citizenship and Immigration Canada "the Service not include certain information unless it has been corroborated", SIRC did not find anything unduly alarming in its public report of the three out of 48 new and carried-over complaints.

I'm sure the four out of five health industry experts that comprise SIRC's review panel on CSIS did the best they could with their unwieldy $3-million Lens of Accountability. Unfortunately that lens is looking the other way in the case Abousfian Abdelrazik, the largest CSIS intelligence scandal since Maher Arar.
.Update : SIRC reviewed CSIS re Abdelrazik for their 2012-2013 report, covering the period from March 2003 to December 2004. It found "no indication that CSIS had requested Sudanese authorities to arrest or detain Abousfian Abdelrazik" , but that "CSIS inappropriately and, in contravention of CSIS policy, disclosed personal and classified information." Further, "in mid-2004 in preparation for Mr. Abdelrazik’s possible release, SIRC found that CSIS assessments to its government partners contained exaggerated and inaccurately conveyed information" and that "CSIS excessively reported, and hence retained in its operational databases, a significant amount of information not related to the threat, originating from individuals who were not targets.".

Wednesday, November 23, 2011

The JIG is up. An RCMP 'joint intelligence group' - comprised of federal, provincial and municipal police -infiltrated activist groups prior to the G20 and Vancouver Olympics in what they call "one of the largest domestic intelligence operations in Canadian history".

Constable Bindo Showan of the Ontario Provincial Police,one of the two principal undercover Ontario spies, is a stunning example of their intelligence at work.

Earlier this fall, Showan told the court about how he attended a meeting prior to the Toronto summit. There, a protest-planning group that included several of the 17 main G20 defendants was discussing whether to lend their support to a First Nations rally.Adam Lewis, one of the 17 accused conspirators in the G20 case, interjected, “Kill whitey!” The group chuckled. Lewis, like all but one of his co-accused, is white.

When a Crown lawyer asked the officer what he thought Lewis meant, Showan said in complete seriousness, to "kill white people."

Apparently we do not have the right not to be spied and reported on by morons or covert operatives pretending to be morons.

"The 2010 G8 summit in Huntsville ... will likely be subject to actions taken by criminal extremists motivated by a variety of radical ideologies. These ideologies may include variants of anarchism, anarcho-syndicalism, nihilism, socialism and/or communism. These ideologies may also include notions of racial supremacy and white power ...

"The important commonality is that these ideologies ... place these individuals and/or organizations at odds with the status quo and the current distribution of power in society.

In addition to these generally held tenets, a variety of grievances exist: These grievances are based upon notions/expectations regarding the environment, animal rights, First nations' resource-based grievances, gender/racial equality, and distribution of wealth etc."

RCMP records suggest that the reconnaissance continues. Report logs indicate at least 29 incidents of police surveillance between the end of the G20 summit and April 2011 — more than nine months after world leaders departed Toronto.

The same document indicates that the RCMP-led intelligence team made a series of presentations to private-sector corporations, including one to "energy sector stakeholders" in November 2011.

Good to know.

After millions of dollars and 70,000 pages of Crown evidence, conspiracy charges have been dropped against the 17 activists held in jail or under house arrest for the last 18 months, but 6 of them will serve jail time for counselling mischief, with an additional charge of counselling to obstruct police leveraged against Alex Hundert and Mandy Hiscocks.

Monday, November 21, 2011

"in an effort to pressure Tehran to halt its suspected nuclear weapons program. The British announced the first measures, declaring they would cut off all financial ties with Iranian banks to stem the flow of funds for its nuclear and ballistic missile programs."

Although Haaretz reported this wee additional morsel about slightly more selective US sanctions :

"One U.S. official told ABC that Iran’s Central Bank and oil and gas sector would not be targeted in this new round of sanctions out of fear that these measures would lead to increased oil prices, and damage to the U.S economy."

Meanwhile, back in Canada, Iranian banksters connected to Iran's Revolutionary Guards have been quietly salting it away and settling down in their million-dollar mansions in Toronto and Montreal (italics mine):

A recent example is the former head of Iran's Melli and Sepah Banks, Mahmoud Reza Khavari, who acquired Canadian citizenship under questionable circumstances and then fled this October to his multi-million-dollar Toronto mansion following a $2.6 billion embezzlement scandal in Iran.

Khavari has ties to Ahmadinejad, currently engaged in a bitter power struggle against the Islamic Republic's Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Khamenei. The banks he led are blacklisted by the UN Security Council and the U.S. government for supporting Iran's efforts to acquire nuclear and ballistic missile technology. The banks are also closely linked to Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps.

Saturday, November 19, 2011

As appalling as the first few seconds of this video are - UC Davis Police Lt. John Pike casually walking along a line of seated students and pepper-spraying them point blank in the face - it's worth watching to the end to see how brilliantly the students handle it.

Human microphone :

"Mike check ... mike check .... We are willing ... to give you a brief moment ... of peace ... so that you may take your weapons ... and our friends ... and go. ... Please do not return ... We are giving you a moment of peace ... We are giving you a moment of peace ... You can go ... and we will not follow you ... You can go you can go you can go you can go you can go you can go ....."

And after a brief show of waving their paintguns about and shaking up their pepper spray cans ... the police retreat. Score one for #Occupy.

Monday Update : Police Chief Spicuzza, Lt. Pike and one other pepperspraying police officer placed on administrative leave. Statements from the university chancellor and this from the president of the University of the California system :

"The time has come to take strong action to recommit to the ideal of peaceful protest."

Wednesday, November 16, 2011

Actual Harper quote : "I remain optimistic that the project will eventually go ahead because it makes eminent sense."

I'm surprised that TransCanada's forays into eminent domain - a corporations' state-sanctioned right to expropriate private property for the public good - and you're not fooling us with that jobs, jobs, jobs crap, btw - has not made more of a splash with the property rights crowd up here. It certainly was the key to opposition to the pipeline south of the border.

A Canadian company (sic) has been threatening to confiscate private land from South Dakota to the Gulf of Mexico, and is already suing many who have refused to allow the Keystone XL pipeline on their property even though the controversial project has yet to receive federal approval.

While it is impossible to say how many cases are working their way through the legal system, in addition to the 56 Texas and South Dakota cases, TransCanada acknowledges it has sent “Dear Owner” letters to dozens of families in Nebraska.

Here is one such letter, sent back in April to Nebraska landowner Randy Thompson from the TransCanada office in Houston, Texas.

A Nebraska lawmaker [State Sen. Bill Avery] is proposing criminal penalties for pipeline officials who pressure landowners with eminent domain before a pipeline gets the official green light.

Eminent domain refers to the power of governments to take private property for a public use with appropriate compensation. The power is granted to some private companies, such as utilities and railroads.Current state law sets no limits on pipeline companies' use of eminent domain, said Norfolk attorney David Domina. That allowed TransCanada to send out two rounds of letters pressuring landowners to sign easements allowing the controversial Keystone XL pipeline across their land.The letters said that if landowners did not sign within 30 days, the company would use eminent domain to get the right to cross their land.

On Monday, after being hit with a 2 year delay from the US State Dept, TransCanada announced it has reached an agreement with the Nebraska government to change the route of its proposed Keystone XL oil pipeline by 50 km in order to avoid the ecologically sensitive Sandhills region and the most vulnerable part of the Ogallala aquifer, taking one whole day to walk back from its previous claim that any change to the route would be an automatic deal-killer.

Presumably the TransCanada Houston office has now recommenced cranking out eminent domain letters.

Monday, November 14, 2011

Ever since Patrick Muttart left the PMO war room under a cloud back in April for sending a photo of an Iggy look-alike posing in full combat gear in Kuwait to SunNews during a Canadian electionwhile working for a US PR firm, Steve has been struggling along without a proper planning director.

According to the StatsCan Energy Statistics Handbook, Second Quarter, 2011, page 53 and 54, Canada imported 45,125.7 thousands of cubic meters of crude petroleum last year at a cost of $23,855- million, and 3,986.5 thousand cubic meters of it was from the " blood-soaked, conflict oil-fueled foreign dictatorship" of Saudi Arabia, our fifth highest oil import country of origin after Algeria, the UK, Nigeria, and Norway.

More likely Mr Velshi's new job will involve selling us on the idea of shipping ethical oil across BC to China. Good luck with that..

Saturday, November 12, 2011

Former U.S. ambassador to Canada David Wilkins calls it "catastrophic", FinMin Flaherty said "the delay may kill the project" so Canada will look into sending our oil to China via BC instead, and TransCanada Corp is "deeply disappointed". So goes the official reaction to the US State Dept decision to delay Keystone XL for further examination.

But the vast majority of commentsfrom the public under these news stories boil down to this :
Why doesn't Canada do its own tarsands refining?
Why isn't Canada building its own refineries and keeping the jobs here rather than just shipping the raw material abroad?

The response from purported industry insiders under these comments runs as follows :

that no investors are willing to undertake building tarsands refineries because it would be very very expensive; not enough profit margin; that there would be considerable Canadian nimby, environmental, and FN opposition to building them leading to a protracted approval process of uncertain outcome; that Canada does not have the expertise to build them; that Canadian labour costs are too high.

I guess it's too obvious to include that multicorps and foreign companies operating in the tarsands likely want to optimize corporate control and profits by owning both ends of the supply line.

"American-controlled enterprises continued to dominate the shares of assets, revenues and profits under foreign-control. These enterprises increased their share of both revenues and profits to 59.1% and 58.3% respectively."

"In the oil and gas extraction industry, foreign-controlled enterprises increased their share of revenues to 51.1%. This occurred as revenues declined nearly twice as fast in 2009 for domestic enterprises as they did for foreign enterprises."

Looking through the producing members of the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers, I notice nearly 20% of them list their head offices outside Canada, mostly in Texas. 20% doesn't sound like much but many of them are the bigs, including Koch, ExxonMobil, Shell.

Meanwhile China's investment in the tarsands is up to what - $13-billion now?

"My simple point is that you lose ownership, you lose control. Those who control the resource always have the incentive to dig it up as soon as possible,” Mr. De Bever said.

Mr. De Bever said it would make more sense for Canada to accelerate the development of technologies to produce the oil sands, improving environmental impacts and efficiency, rather than accelerate extraction.“That is where that tradeoff of digging up now versus digging up later comes in,” he said. “If you know that in a few years you can make it drastically more efficient, it makes the resource more valuable.”

“If you want a strong Canadian economy, to some degree large Canadian institutions have got to take it upon themselves to be not just passive investors,” said Mr. De Bever. “Doing the right thing is not part of my mandate. Doing the profitable thing is. But if I can do the right thing and the profitable thing, I would do so.”

No worries though - the Senate Armed Services Committee 'discovered' exactly this same Chinese fake parts racket back in 2005, and again in 2008, and everyone on the committee had a cow both of those times as well but nothing came of it.

"As electronics manufacturing migrated to China, the US has been less and less able to control the quality of its military hardware. Some of the fake chips are bought by the Pentagon on the open market .... Thesechips are often salvaged by Chinese scrap merchants from the dumps of electronic waste that have accumulated in the south of the country "

... where they are burned off old computer circuit boards, sanded down, repainted, and voilà - the new F-35 chop shop war bling!

" 'Ello, I wish register a complaint about this plane which I purchased not half an hour ago from this very boutique."

Monday, November 07, 2011

"The weekend death of a female protester at the Occupy Vancouver site has done incalculable damage to a global protest campaign that suddenly finds itself at a crossroads.

Increasing problems at the sites are now overshadowing Occupy’s root cause and tarnishing the image of the entire movement. Its future gets cloudier by the day."

See, Gary would really like to support the movement but because 22 year old Ashlie Gough selfishly died at Occupy Vancouver instead of a few blocks away in the Downtown Eastside where these things go unreported, sadly he now finds himself irrevocably drawn into the get-the-hell-off-my-public-lawn media camp.

Gary declares that with the Vancouver election just 12 days away, this is "a referendum on Vancouver Mayor Gregor Robertson's leadership", a quote happily repeated by CKNW's Bill Good on his mayoralty debate radio show between Robertson and NPA hopeful Susan Anton this morning.

"Those who feel threatened by the Occupy movement think that by forcibly clearing out the encampments that they will cut the movement off at the knees, nothing could be further from reality. The camps will eventually end organically on their own, signalling the onset of the next phase of the movement towards social justice. But no matter how they end the movement has become unstoppable.

The Occupiers and their supporters have already succeeded in changing the conversation from one of tax cuts , deficits and the necessity of austerity to one of social and economic injustice. This is no small feat. Thanks to the Occupy Movement, Labour appears ready to end it's internecine wars and start to unite again in order to battle for the common good once more, again no small feat.

In other words this first phase of the movement has already been a huge success, violently suppressing this outpouring of dissatisfaction with the current sate of affairs will only prove to many that they Occupiers are right and can only as it has already done result in it's growth.
The battle for a better world has been joined and while it will likely be a long one, those who hanker for a more just society will never surrender."

Tuesday, November 01, 2011

Ethical Oil's new spokesy Kathryn Marshall had a little think yesterday about whether the tarsands are still ethical even if bits of it are owned by China and its unethical oil company, and even if Ottawa and Alberta are successful in their bid to hawk the stuff to communist China.

"Is Canadian oil suddenly less ethical, " she asks, "when it's produced and used by unethical countries?"No! she answers, it's still ethical!
You're shocked, I'm sure.

"The whole notion of ethical oil sets up a false dilemma because the very viscous Canadian crude needs to be cut with lighter oils from places like Saudi Arabia in order to be transported down a pipeline, says Chris MacDonald, a visiting scholar for the Clarkson Centre for Business Ethics at the University of Toronto.

"So what's the point of having ethical oil if you are mixing it with this 'conflict oil'?"

"By 2025, for example Canada could be importing more than two million barrels of foreign or so-called "unethical" oil a day, just to transport bitumen to U.S. refineries."

The problem of adding imported diluents to tarsands crude is of considerable concern to CAPP, the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers, says Nikiforuk. Seems foreign diluents could be subject to US country-of-origin duty charges both when it is imported into Canada from non-NAFTA sources via US ports, and again when it is shipped from Canada back to US refineries.

Tune in next week when Kathryn considers whether it's ok for ethical oil to steal a loaf of bread to feed a hungry child ...

.Update : The CAPP Industry presentation "Rethinking Nafta Certification of Canadian Heavy Crude Oil" link appears to no longer be available so here's a google cache copy and a pdf copy . Info quoted above is from pages 5 to 10..